Final Spurt for OpenSuse 11.1 RC 1

Opensuse 11.1 is in the starting blocks. With the official version due in December, release candidate RC 1 is available now.

"If all goes well, this will be the last testing release before the final 11.1 public release on December 18th." says Opensuse Community Manager Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier in his blog.

What's changed? Apart from additional translations and a new kernel version (2.6.27.1), users can now operate without EULA. Opensuse 11.1 comes totally free of proprietary programs, eliminating the necessity of confirming license conditions. Software from Adobe and Skype can be installed from external package sources at a later date. Also on board is a test version of the popular audio player Amarok 2.0, along with the fixed package manager Zypper, version 1.0.1.

While Zonker calls for the Opensuse community to test the distro, he advises that this is not a stable version and not reliable for everyday use because the distribution is not yet bug-free. The new version is available for testing, complete with DVD and CD images for the 32 and 64 Bit systems in the developer area of the Opensuse website.

The openSUSE project warns owners of systems containing the Intel e1000e gigabit Ethernet card against using the actual Beta 1 of openSUSE 11.1 instead of the Linux kernel version. The Linux version can permanently damage the card.